Late Affections
by crinklescofftrip
Summary: VERY loosely based on Tim McGraw's 'Don't Take the Girl.' Neji thinks he's stoic. Other people agree...most of the time. NejiHina


Johnny's daddy was taking him fishing

A small chibi-like version of Neji walked along the street leading away from the Hyuuga estate while holding on tightly to his uncle's hand. Normally he and his uncle didn't do anything together, but today was special. He was turning four today! Originally, his father was going to go out with him to celebrate, but for some reason, his aunt said that he wasn't feeling well. That seemed strange to him, because Neji had seen his daddy at breakfast, and he seemed alright then, a little quiet maybe, but for the most part well enough to take him into town.

Luckily, his uncle offered to take him to the training rounds with him when he saw how disappointed Neji was that his father couldn't spend time with him. And that's what had brought him to happily walking down the street next to his uncle (four years olds get over disappointment fast). Uncle Hiashi even said that he had a surprise for him later!

When he was eight years old,

Holding onto his nephew's two hands more tightly with one of his own, Hiashi hefted him up so that his feet were no longer within reach of the ground, and lightly swung the boy forward and back, watching him beam at the attention. The boy's hair flapped a little around his pale, currently blank forehead, and Hiashi thought quietly to himself, _Might as well let him be happy when he can._

Letting go of the hand, Neji jumped forward and landed on his feet on the sidewalk ahead of his uncle, with a proud smile his naive face. That had been fun! And he didn't even hurt himself when he landed! Turning around, he was about to ask his uncle if he saw how he landed, when he noticed that Hiashi had stopped walking. In fact, he was no longer looking forward. With one hand put up to shield his eyes from the sun, the older Hyuuga was staring back in the direction that they had just come.

A little girl came through the front gate,

Neji's whole, small body whipped around and then ran forward to tug on his uncle's sleeve and ask what he was staring at, when his white eyes fell on the small, fragile form that was heavily huffing as it made it's way toward them. He recognized his three year old younger cousin before she reached them. Hinata.

Neji's innocent little face twisted into a frown as he looked up at his uncle, silently praying for him to send the girl away.

But, red face and rapidly trying to slow down her breathing, Hinata's short legs came to a stop in front of her father. She seemed up at Hiashi, and shakily, in the short, unsteady words used by toddlers, she said, "M-Mama say I go too!"

"No!" The little girl's small, hopeful face dropped when her cousin answered before her father. Tugging on his uncles sleeve, he went up onto his tip-toes to bring himself closer to the adult. "I don't want her to come with us! She can't fight any good! Please?"

Holding a fishing pole,

"Mama say I go too!" the little girl said back, words no more graceful on the three year old's lips than they would be ten years later, but much easier to fire out of her small mouth.

As Hiashi looked down at the troubled four year old, he noticed how the upward angle of the small face made the boy's bangs fall back and the sun shine directly onto the pale, unblemished brow. "Neji," he said as gently as he could, which wasn't easy considering his harsh character, "maybe it wouldn't be so bad letting a girl train with us."

His dad looked down and smiled,

Said "We can't leave her behind,

"But you promised!" Neji insisted, grabbing onto Hiashi's sleeve with both hands and gazing up at him with pleading white eyes. "You said it could be just you and me!"

Hiashi looked between the two white-eyed children, the double assault of large eyes and pouting lips making it hard for even him to be firm. Still, if one of them had to be disappointed... "She's going to be your clan head someday, Neji," he made his voice firm as he disentangled his sleeve from the boy's small hands. "If she wants to train with you, you say yes, and nothing else. Is that clear?"

"Son I know you don't want her to go,

"But someday you'll change your mind."

"Not-uh!" Stubbornly, the boy cross his arms around his chest and sulked in the ground's direction. "Anyone else would be better! Why can't we take Sasuke? Or even that kid with the funny looking scars?"

And Johnny said,

"Take Jimmy Johnson,

"Take Tommy Thompson,

"Take my best friend, Bow,

"Take any body that you want to,

"So long as she don't go,

At the last mentioned substitute, Hiashi gave the smaller Hyuuga a cold, stern look, telling the child that if he wanted to go to the training grounds at all that day, he would fall silent immediately. He motioned for Hinata to come with them, and again started walking away from the Hyuuga estate.

"Take any boy in the world,

"But Daddy, please,

Neji, no longer holding onto his uncle's hand, fell back on his shorter legs and less than enthusiastic pace. He ended up walking next to Hinata, who babbled happily in the way that some three year olds could, thinking that she made perfect sense despite her lack of an interested listener. It took her awhile to figure out that her cousin was sulking and stop talking.

"Don't take the girl."

kkkkkkkkkkk

Standing at the back of a black clothed crowd, Neji stood silently staring directly ahead. He supposed that his uncle would have preferred to have him standing at the front of the crowd with the rest of the family; it was better for appearances. He thought that the people gathered were definitely expecting that. Especially the Gennins who had seen Naruto defeat him during the Chuunin exams and heard his speech about why he shouldn't blame the Main House for his fate, and all that. They had thought he had changed. But even with the people that hadn't witnessed the fight between himself and the preaching blonde, it was obvious that he was causing whispers by staying where he was. He'd already counted several stares directed towards him by nosy she-nins.

One by one, the crowd became smaller as people went forward to drop little white flowers on the freshly covered grave. No one stayed afterward. The woman being buried today hadn't had any close friends, hadn't had any friends at all in over ten years. There wasn't even going to be a wake.

Same old boy, same sweet girl,

One by one, Neji watched the little flowers drop, and knew that didn't mean anything. They only signified the passing of a woman that had truthfully been dead to the world for a very long time. He waited until he was sure that he was the last person standing in that part of the cemetery before he finally approached the freshly turned earth. Later, the caretakers would unroll a mat of already living grass over the grave, and it would look as if it really had been there for years.

His uncle had stayed for a while, too. When the crowd of people paying their last respects had thinned, Neji's white eyes had locked with the identical ones of his clan head. He probably thought that Neji was trying to spite him by separating himself from the Main House family, the looked of angered disappointment he sent Neji's way said as much.

Ten years down the road,

Hiashi left with his two daughters fallowing him in a straight line. Neji thought that it was strange that they still called themselves a clan when there were now only four of them left, and all so distant from one another. Neither of his cousins looked back at him when they walked away with their father, as the last member of the branch house went to his mother's grave.

He didn't have a flower to offer her. With all the bouquets that his uncle and other respected clans had ordered, he hadn't thought to bring one himself. His mother wasn't really fond of flowers anyway, as far as he knew. So he stood empty handed, which in a way was fitting for the end of their empty relationship. His mother hadn't offered him anything in life other than a locked door and a handful of haunted glances, and now he offered her the same in death. His heart was simply closed to the whole event.

Perhaps it was because he had always believed that his parents had been close, given the way his mother had hermitted herself away after Hizashi's death, and a part of him regretted that she had never attempted to build as strong a bond with him. But that didn't excuse his lack of feeling at his mother's death. There should have been something. He remembered how Hinata had cried at his aunt's funeral, despite the lack of communication between them. At Chouji's death, Shikamaru hadn't cried openly, but he had at least had red outlining his eyes and had seemed caught up in a world of his own. Even Uchiha Sasuke, at eight years old, had camped out on a little white bench in his family's personal corner of the cemetery for days on end until he had finally been dragged away for food.

Yet, all Neji could do when it was finally his turn to experience the death of someone close to him (genetically, at least), all he could do was stare blankly at the headstone and wonder why he didn't feel _something._

"N-Neji-niisan?"

He held her hand and kissed her lips,

Neji turned his head when a voice said his name. He knew from the stutter who it was before he lifted his head and was greeted with the sight of his cousin standing only a foot away from him. Appearances' sake must had forced Hiashi to finally send someone back to get him.

Like they were at her mother's funeral, Hinata's eyes were puffy and overly wet, ready to start crying at a moments notice. Neji thought he felt a pang of envy at how easily Hinata was able to mourn an aunt she hardly knew. The effect of the red around her eyes made the irises stand out and her skin seem more pale than usual. Almost sickly. With her fingers twiddling around in front of her, she seemed like a fragile little girl.

"N-Neji..." she said his name a second time, head turning down. He guessed that she must have noticed that he was staring. She took a step toward him. Then another, closing the distance between them as she fiddled with her hands. "I-I'm sorry for..." she turned her head toward the grave, hoping that her cousin would be able to pick it up.

In front of the picture show,

Neji didn't say anything in response. Hinata dared to lift her head, fearing that he might have been angry at her. He'd been so quiet since they discovered his mother's death. No one had known about it for a at least three days, the examiners had said. Three whole days with no one knowing that she was gone... But when her eyes locked on Neji's face, he wasn't glaring. His expression was just as blank as it always had been. Because of how difficult it was to see the pupils of the Hyuuga family's trademark eyes, Hinata couldn't even tell if he was really looking at her.

Neji had never been much of a family person. Hinata wasn't really sure what she had been thinking when she told her father that she was going to wait to walk home with him. She wasn't good at things like this...

Neji's eyes were unblinking. Maybe she had made a mistake in coming back into the graveyard, but she just...Neji looked so alone standing there. Her body was telling her it was time to leave, almost turning on its own. This was jus too difficult for her. But then Neji...

Before she could let her low self-esteem change her mind, Hinata forced her feet to move. Neji had already turned back to stare at the grave; by the time he looked up she was too close for him to move away. Jumping a little to catch onto his taller form, Hinata walked right up to Neji and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

When Neji didn't pull away at the contact, Hinata inwardly did a little dance of triumph. _I did it!_

Head buried in her cousin's shoulder, Hinata didn't see how Neji's eyes became slightly rounder with suppressed surprise. He stood completely still while she hugged him, letting the younger Hyuuga do what she wanted until her rare burst of self confidence left her. Then she scrambled for something to say. "I'm really sorry, Neji," she tried lamely. At least she knew that with her mouth this close to his ear, there was no way Neji could not understand her mumbling. "I-I don't want you to th-think that no one cares...about you...now..."

She should have said something meaningful after that. That's what would happen if this were a movie, or a book. The only problem was, she couldn't think of what would be on the script if it existed. The moment stretched on tantalizingly, and then it was gone. Neji didn't exactly tell her to let go, but she felt how his body stiffened with discomfort. Reluctantly, she had to tell her hands to let go of where they had fisted in his jacket, and then step back. Her head dipped back down to watch the space between their feet grow as she stepped away from him. When she looked up at Neji, she noticed that his expression was exactly the same as it had been before, but now she knew that his eyes were on her. She could feel their weight.

She turned to walk away quickly, knowing that it wasn't in Neji to say anything to her after that. He wasn't like Sasuke. His rejections weren't nearly as direct. Her vision blurred as she looked at the ground, carefully stepping around the graves as she made her way back towards the gates. What kind of clan head would she make if she couldn't even comfort her own cousin? Or at least let him how desperately she wanted to be closer to him? Fitting herself into his life where his mother used to be wasn't a very honest way to win him over, but she'd take it. Anything to erase the bitterness that was put between them with the branch house seals.

Stranger came and pulled a gun,

She didn't wait for Neji. She decided that she would just have to try and avoid her father when she got back to the estate, and hope that he wouldn't find out that she came home alone. She was so busy trying to think of what she would say if her father did catch her, that she didn't notice when someone began fallowing her until she felt a large, cold hand clamp down on her mouth, and an arm around her waist.

kkkkkkkk

Neji watched his cousin leave the cemetery, body still warm from where it had been pressed against hers. A voice in the back of his mind told him that his uncle would not like the girl walking home so late in the evening, but he found himself lingering beside his mother's grave a little longer. By the time he finally turned away, it was starting to get dark, and whether he was from a powerful clan or not, the groundskeeper was going to want to close the gates pretty soon.

So he went down the same path Hinata had taken, weeding between the graves respectfully as he went. He didn't know why she had run away from him like she did. He hadn't been scowling at her, or glaring. He'd just been surprised. Hinata's hug was likely the first physical contact he'd had in...days? Months? Since long before he discovered his mother's body. For some reason, outside of training, people rarely touched him of their own accord.

Neji stopped for a moment when he came to the gates, looking back over the deserted graveyard one more time. Hiashi wasn't going to be pleased with him once they were in private. After a day of ignoring whatever gossipers might say, he had avoided being seen with what remained of his family. And then he had disrespected his mother by approaching her grave last and without a flower. And finally, he'd let his future clan head walk home unescorted in the dark. It was very careless of him; very out of character. He wasn't looking forward to going back to his clan.

But then, that was only thinking of Hiashi. Not Hinata. Not the girl that had just hugged him and told him that she cared. Or the one that turned away from him crying- he knew that because of how her shoulders shook as she walked away.

It felt colder leaving than it had when Neji had come in. It might have been because now the sun had gone down, or because he'd felt the warmth of another's body against his own for the first time in so long. He wasn't in the mood to analyze why.

When he got onto the street, unknowingly, he began to walk a little faster. Still partially in a dazed state, the stoic ninja could only think of getting back to the Hyuuga estate, and hopefully slipping into his room unnoticed, where he would be able to muse over the days events in peace. He wasn't aware that his senses were becoming more alert as he walked, eyes staring and taking in everything on the road ahead of him, and ears sharply picking up every sound.

Grabbed her by the arm,

Still, the conscious part of his brain was surprised when he heard a small, muffled sound. He supplied himself with explanations that could have been perfectly acceptable, it could have been a stray dog that somehow the Inuzuka clan hadn't adopted yet; or a moan made by a couple hiding in the shadows, but his feet were moving toward it regardless. Like they didn't hear his mind dismiss the noise.

He slipped into the ally, not even sure if that was were the sound had come from. It had been so brief that he might have been able to convince himself that he imagined it if he tried hard enough...but then he heard it again, and his feet took him deeper into the ally.

He moved quietly, silent movement coming naturally to the ninja genius. Any shinobi that couldn't muster stealth on impulse would have been an embarrassment to the trade.

And any member of the Hyuuga family, branch house or no, who could have failed to see the lithe, male form wearing a long dark over coat and moving franticly against the wall, would have been an embarrassment to the clan. A moment of silent study, and Neji's eyes were able to see that there was another, smaller form between the first one and the ally wall, seeming to prove the second of Neji's original explanations. From where he was standing, the abundant material of the man's coat managed to hide the spot where his hands were forcing the smaller ones to stay pinned against her sides. And because his bloodline limit was not activated, he could not look through the man's form to see the pained, desperate expression on the face of the person pinned against the building's side. All that Neji could see was a couple pressed against a wall, the man's lower body moving in a manner that hinted at what he might have seen if the sheltering coat where not present.

So he had no idea why he didn't just leave them alone.

Neji's feet moved in the exact opposite direction from what he told them to do. When he stood behind the couple, or behind the man mostly since he hadn't seen the other participant yet, he could hear the muffled groans from the larger male. And then the occasional, whimpering sound that had somehow reached him when he was on the sidewalk. For some reason, it sounded different with this view. Not nearly as dismissible.

He said, "If you do what I tell you to,

His hand landed on the man, grip digging into an unsuspecting shoulder easily. This was definitely not something that one was allowed to do in public, even if the streets were deserted in that particular part of the village, he offered to himself as an excuse for the action. Before the man could even stiffen with surprise, Neji had his other hand braced against the brick wall and used it to pry the couple apart. His head turned to fallow the man's form as it lost its balance and stumbled back onto the ground. It didn't cross his mind that the other person might have tried to attack him from behind.

He didn't see the small girl staring wide eyed at the back of his head as she slide to the ground in a trembling heap. He was watching the coated man rise ungracefully to his feet, drawing up the zipper and buttoning his pants up hastily. When he finally did look up, after dusting himself off to take up more time, Neji saw how the eye's widened in surprise, and then dread. It wasn't hard to recognize a Hyuuga.

Neji looked over the man's face. It was plain, without piercings or extra hair outside of his eyebrows; there weren't any scars on his face, which said that the man likely wasn't a ninja; and there were no wrinkles that could indicate the man's age. He was just an average civilian male, one that could be seen repeatedly over time at the grocery stores or bus station, but never noticed.

At the present moment, the man's eyes flickered to the crumpled girl beyond Neji's normal field of vision, then came to his face. Then he turned around and ran away without the slightest hint of hesitation. Neji saw that it was coming when the man first started to turn, even the idiotic Naruto would have seen it.

But before Neji could chase after him, he heard that sound from before, soft and broken. Then...

"N...Neji?"

"There wont be any harm."

Neji turned around at the voice, and his eyes met with a set that matched his own in color exactly. They stayed locked only long enough for Neji's lungs to draw in the deepest breath he thought he could hold, then the other pair darted to the ground. Neither of them spoke. Neji's independent feet suddenly decided to stop working all together, and left him unable to lift them. Not even to turn the rest of his body around. He stood less than two steps away from his cousin, close enough to see how runny, wet streaks stood out on her face in the darkening skylight, while his body still face the direction that her assaulter had ran off in.

Her clothes were a disgrace. Torn, dirty...the long black skirt that Hinata had she had been wearing to the funeral especially. Neji knew from the fuss her maid made about it, that the skirt had belonged the Hinata's mother. If Hiashi remembered, he would be furious. If not, then the maid would be. There were smears on the pale gray sweater that she had been wearing as well; one sleeve torn a little at the hem as if she had tried to yank it off in a struggle.

Feeling the eyes on her, Hinata raised her head to stare at him through the colorless eyes that should have been chilling to anyone _except _a fellow Hyuuga. Neji wanted to look away. There were _bruises _on the girl's face. Large, and different shades like a calico cat's spots. There was one particular one around the girl's mouth that was shaped just so he could guess at the man's hand size, and then...

Neji blinked. He was a ninja. Bruises, no matter what their cause, should not affect him. Especially bruises belonging to a Main House member. As a member of the Branch House...as a member of her family, he should do something about the cause of those bruises. Kami, she looked as if she'd just been in a spar with a ruthless partner.

Twisting his head back around so that it faced the direction that he had last seen the coated man, Neji forced his foot to take a step away from the girl that had tried to comfort him only a short while ago. Anyone who would dare assault the future head of the Hyuuga clan could not be allowed to...

"Wait!"

Neji only made that one step.

"P-Please...Neji..."

Hinata swallowed hard, fighting the urge to cower when her cousin's head turned around to stare at her coldly. She wondered if he was snickering behind his mask about what had finally become of the disgrace daughter. "Please..."

She lifted a hand and held it out pitifully. Neji couldn't tear his eyes away from the discolored ring around her wrist.

"W-Would you help me?"

kkkkkkkkkkkk

Neji walked down the darkened hallway silently, sending extra chakra into his feet to ensure that they wouldn't make a sound on any of the loose floorboards as he went. He knew that Hinata's maids had rooms near hers so that they would be able to reach her if she needed them during the night. And, he suspected, the women had been given specific orders by Hiashi to have at least one of them awake and listening for late night callers since the night of his mother's funeral. The sensible side of Neji's mind told him that approaching his cousin at night was not a good idea. It would look suspicious. It could spread rumors. But then, he argued back, would he really receive a response if he spoke to her during the day, with her maids within earshot?

Not that they weren't now. It was just less likely that the non-ninja servants would be as focused on their work at night.

Neji stopped in front of Hinata's door. He could see a light outlining its shape, indicating that his cousin was still awake. That was probably good. Under the circumstances, the would have been the slightest feeling of guilt if he disturbed her rest.. Raising his hand to knock, he was aware that the maids might hear him if he made the sound to loud. But if the sound was too soft, Hinata probably wouldn't hear it. He let his chakra control drop for a minute, hoping that his cousin would recognize the signature.

He waited for a moment afterward, thinking that maybe Hinata had fallen asleep with the lights on for some reason, but then the door opened.

And Johnny said,

Normally, Neji would never have considered coming to the Hyuuga heir's bedroom. If he pressed his memory long enough, he might have been able to remember when the last time he had been inside his cousin's room was. He knew that it had to have been sometime in his early childhood, before he and Hinata had understood the difference between the words "main" and "branch."

Hinata's room hadn't changed much since they were children. It had lost some of its childish lace and frills, but for the most part still looked as if it belong to a small girl. As a child, Hinata had thought that pink was too loud of a color for her room, and after her mother finally relented, had lathered her room in different tones and shades of violet and purple. It was a shame that she had lost the assertive part of her nature as she grew older.

Before Neji was even fully inside the room, Hinata turned back to her bed to take a seat on top of the rumpled mattress. If Neji had not been aware of the justification for the girl's actions, he might have been offended. As it was, the reason that the white-eyed girl would want to stay off her feet was blaringly clear as her arms strained to let her fingers find each other around her rounded stomach.

Partially to avoid staring, Neji turned around and softly closed the door for her.

"Take my money,

Hinata waited until she heard the soft click that signaled the door's closing before she greeted him. "G-Good evening, Neji-niisan."

Neji returned her greeting, and silently wished that she wouldn't look down so shyly. It made him want to look down, and that meant seeing something that ruthlessly reminded him of both the reason why he had come, and how uneasy the subject made him.

When he forced his attention back to the girl's face, he still couldn't bring himself to break the silence. Seeing her in this condition, he had to wonder how he was able to hate her so easily before. Like her room, Hinata had hardly changed since they were small. She still looked like a little girl that desperately wanted attention from her family and received nothing but high expectations that she didn't know how to achieve.

She still looked like a little girl...if one avoided looking below her shoulders.

One thing that Neji and Hinata had in common, he thought as he again forced his attention away from the unusual swell of his cousin's stomach, was that they were both quiet. And that both of them knew how to avoid breaking a silence. However, if he allowed it to continue, he might find himself standing in the girl's room all night. Which would again, feed rumors. So he spoke first. "I want to tell the Hokage what happened."

Neji heard himself speaking, and noted that it came out in his usual, indifferently cool tones. But his eyes betrayed him. They locked onto the swollen stomach for the third time. He could perfectly recall the face of the man that had assaulted his future clan head. He knew that he could describe it for Tsunade. Or even Hiashi, if no one else.

"Take my wallet,

Hinata's eyes -still so innocent looking after the past five months- looked up at him. They seemed to grow larger in the silence that fallowed his statement. Before she finally did answer, Neji saw how her eyes darted upward for a moment and rested on his forehead-protector, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip. Then she refocused on his face, and said in a firm voice said, "No."

That would have been enough for Neji. Just a simple, straight answer. As a branch house member, he couldn't disagree with it. He started to back toward the door, but was stopped.

Hinata's words came quickly, like air rushing out of a hole punched in a balloon, "Please, don't. I don't want anyone to know about that. It wasn't...I-I m-mean, if my father found out, he wouldn't hide it from anybody. A-and...and I don't th-think anybody sh-should...M-my father would m-make s-sure that she knew about...no one should grow up like that..." And also like a balloon, Hinata's words slowed to a stop when the air ran out. Neji had to take a moment to paste together what his cousin was saying.

His eyes darted downward once again. He had heard, from the servants talking when they thought that none of the Hyuuga family members were nearby, that the Hyuuga clan's women tended to show progress early. If this was true, Neji had no one to compare it too. He was too young to take much notice of the pregnancy when Hanabi was born. But he did know that in Hinata's case the rumor had been correct. And if Hiashi had noticed, he had gone directly into denial.

At first, they had thought that Hinata had caught some kind of flu when she began getting sick in the mornings. Then she had begun to grow faint in the afternoons, and her eating habits changed...when she began to put on weight despite her violent morning sicknesses, one of her older maids had finally snapped at Hiashi that the girl needed medical attention.

The results of the doctor's tests had been surprising to Neji. He wasn't sure if they had been to his uncle, or Hinata herself, but knew better than to ask.

It was already too late for _arrangements _to be made to be keep the pregnancy as nothing more than a dark secret. Servants talked.

"Take my credit cards,

Neji drew off all of his experience as a cold, heartless shinobi of the Leaf when he again brought his attention back up to Hinata's face. He was going to have to pick apart the vague argument his cousin had offered him if there was still a chance at convincing her. "Your father thinks that it's mine."

He saw her flinch. He knew she would, but he couldn't stop there. He knew that she was a weak fighter as far as attacking went, but she could hold out longer than any other ninja that he had ever seen, and he also knew that she would hang onto her silence for the rest of her life without badgering. "He also thinks that it could be Uzumaki's," he said, remembering the blond haired boy who they both knew was guilty of nothing more than a bright smile and shouted "Congratulations!" when he heard about her condition. Though, Neji was sure that his reaction would have been considerably different if he knew the cause of it.

Hinata's eye's stayed trained on his face, though Neji could see her sucking on her lower lip, just a little.

"Shino's been brought up as a possible father, as well. And Kiba." Both the boy's were close to her, despite the fact that Hinata was no longer a Gennin, and both Hinata and Neji knew that that made them easy targets for gossipers.

They both also knew that he wasn't making anything up. Almost every male she had come into contact with had been thrown into question. Even Rock Lee, though like Naruto, he had only brightly said that he was happy for her. Though they were far less likely according to gossip. There was only one night that Hinata could have conceived before her sickness started, and on that night, she just happened to have been on with Neji.

"Here's the watch that my grandpa gave me,

"Your father will make sure it knows the possibilities growing up. Unless you say something against it, there will be close to no chance of it inheriting. It will be less than a member of the branch house," he spoke emotionlessly, though again, he knew that this was a very real possibility. In all honesty, Neji couldn't say that he would be surprised if he saw it sporting a branch house seal before its first birthday. His cousin was still watching him, and that was making him uneasy. She was sealing herself up inside her defenses, remaining quiet and letting him speak, though the sad acceptance in her expression told him that she wasn't listening.

The next thing that he said was something that he had thought about constantly since the moment he found out about his cousin's condition, and what had finally driven him into the hallway that night. "That man will hear about this. He can use it against you, or the family. He knew who you were. If he finds out about the pregnancy, he's likely going to try to use it to his advantage," he said. "It would be better to report him to the Hokage before he can do that."

Hinata took a deep breath when Neji finished speaking. She stood up, swaying a little at first before she found her balance, and started to take a few tentative steps towards him. Her head stayed angled slightly downward, so that she was staring at his legs, then his stomach, rather than his face while she spoke. "N-Neji...why are you calling my baby an it?"

"Here's the key to my car,

Neji blinked. That had not been an answer. That had been a question, one that started off a completely different subject. He started to say so, but then Hinata cut him off...by wordlessly taking his hand and laying it flat over her stomach.

"How do you think my little girl would feel if sh-she knew that I was raped?" She said and then paused, though Neji couldn't tell if she was waiting for him to respond of if she had just lost her nerve for a moment. After taking another breath, she started talking again. "I would r-rather have people scandalize me, then scorn her f-for something th-that happened. Does that make s-sense?"

Neji didn't say anything back. Hinata let her eyes drop back to the floor. It was just as hard to speak to him as it had been last time... Still, this time she didn't have the option of running home. She forced her mouth to work, forcing out words for the cousin she still cared about so deeply, "I'm sorry that your name has been brought into this. If it would be better, you could stop-"

"Mister, give it a whirl,

Hinata stopped in mid word when she felt something jab at her insides. Her attention became inward as her baby moved restlessly inside her until, with a sudden rush of heat to her face, she realized that she was still holding her cousin's hand to her stomach. She dropped it quickly, but the hand didn't move right away. Looking at each other one more time, Neji opened the door and nodded his goodnight before leaving the room.

"But please,

Going back to her own bed, Hinata thought to herself that it wasn't like Neji to leave a discussion unfinished like that. She told herself that he might have heard something that she was too distracted to hear, and maybe had gotten a little shaken. Though, deep down, she doubted that anything could really shake Neji.

"Don't take the girl."

kkkkkkkkk

Same old boy, Same sweet girl,

Neji shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he stood only a few inches away from the waiting room wall. He refused to leaned against it. Not only would that give away how tired he was, but it would also lose the battle of wills that he was currently having with his uncle as they took turns staring at one another from across the room. So far, neither of them had shown any signs of discomfort, though Neji's weight shifts were little by little becoming more frequent.

His uncle was seated only a few feet away, with a magazine open on his lap and his face angled down toward it. But despite the facade, Neji could see how he glanced up from time to time, no matter how discretely. He was watching Neji for signs of weakness, any signs of the nervousness that most fathers experienced when they came into this room. Over the past few months, Neji knew that the rumors had not died down. If anything, as time went by, more stories spread. And he knew that he was still the leading candidate for Hinata's lover.

Beside Hiashi, Hanabi was seated. Her head was rested on the chair's arm while her body curled into a ball-like shape with her legs tucked under her. For all her knowledge of the world of ninjutsu, Neji was sure that she didn't understand what it mean when her sister raced into their father's room and shakily said, "I-It's time!"

Neji had tired to sit beside her when they had first come in, but had to give it up. Sitting took up too little energy. It almost made him start fidgeting like the cousin's fault it was he was currently standing in the room. He still felt like he could use to burn some energy, if only to distract himself from how uncomfortable it was standing in that little room with the main family. But pacing was too stereotypical of an expecting father, so was tapping his foot, or taking walks down the hall to get a cup of coffee. And for all the humiliation Hinata had taken over the past nine months, Neji refused to support suspicions about their "relationship."

And besides, pacing went again his stoic image.

So Neji settled for standing until his legs collapsed under him, back telephone-pole-straight, and his eyes focused unblinkingly on the delivery room door, willing it to open and admit the doctor.

Five years down the road,

As if by some cruel ability, Hiashi was completely unaffected by anything. He didn't say a word to his nephew or youngest daughter after they were told by the hospital staff to wait. Neji was somewhat angered by the fact that the expecting grandfather had decided to let Hinata go through the ordeal alone. He wished that they could have brought along one of Hinata's maids maid. At least she would have shown some form of concern for her long-time charge.

But instead Hinata was alone in the delivery room. And offering to go in with his cousin would have been as good as admitting defeat to his uncle.

Hinata's teammates had shown up shortly after she'd gone in. How they had found out about the Hyuuga clan's sudden late-night trip to the hospital, Neji wasn't sure. He suspected that they had come as a group because of how quickly their appearance followed one another. Kiba had come in first, slamming the door and shouting out Hinata's name as if it would allow him to see her. Neji thought that when his eyes met with his uncles, they were both thinking the same thing. _Idiot._

The dog-lover had been harshly informed that only family members where allowed in the delivery room, and after Kiba's little dog sent Neji a growl in response, the two had settled for pacing around the magazine rack. Neji wondered why his uncle didn't turn to stare at the Inuzuka instead of himself. Even knowing the truth, Neji felt his eyes narrow irritably every time they landed on the form circling the magazine rack with his little furry companion trotting around his leg, looking as if they were planning to attack it.

A little later, Hinata's old Gennin sensei had come through the door. She was greeted a little more politely by Hiashi, and then loudly by her brown-haired student, before she took a seat on the side of the Hyuuga clan head that wasn't occupied by Hanabi's dozing form.. She told Hiashi that he didn't have anything to worry about. Even if teenage pregnancies were often rough, Hinata was stronger than she looked. She could handle it.

A bitter voce in the back of Neji's mind wanted to sneer in the woman's direction and ask why, if her ex-student was so strong and capable, wasn't she able to fend off a civilian rapist? Neji smothered that voice.

And not five minutes after Kurenai's appearance, Shino slipped quietly into the room. His footsteps were quieter, making it harder for him to detect than his teammate. But then, Shino, coming from a clan that was known for it's emotional detachment, probably hadn't taken off sprinting the moment he'd gotten inside the hospital. Fallowing with his family's reputation, Shino took the chair closest to the door, prepared to leave without a fuss if Hiashi decided that this was strictly a family affair.

Neji wasn't sure whether he was bothered more by the bug-trainer's indifference or his teammate's over excitement.

There's going to be a little one,

Kurenai, Hinata's female Gennin-sensei, made him almost as uncomfortable as her students did. Neji guessed that upon hearing the rumors, the Gennin instructor had decided that the child couldn't possibly have been the product of either of her two male ex-pupils. When Neji's eyes boredly settled on the female Jounin's form, he found her staring directly back at him with an openness that was an insult to her rank.

Neji tried to avoid looking back at her. After a few minutes of letting his eyes wander from person to person to person, he finally focused his attention back on the door in frustration. He had looked into the medical records of the last twenty years after he had stopped receiving long-term missions (the excuse had been that the Hokage didn't want to send any members of the Hyuuga family out of Konoha when Hinata's time was so close, but Neji had the slightest feeling that the woman assigning missions that day was one of the village gossips). He had discovered what the doctor had told them was true: pregnancies for women under the age of twenty were difficult. Majorly so.

So why did everyone just sit quietly in the waiting room? Why wasn't Hiashi with Hinata?

When the door finally gave into his telekinetic commands and a white-clad nurse tentatively stepped into the room, he could see how the total silence of the room hit her. The nurse spent a moment standing motionlessly in front of the group of ninjas, unable to make a sound. Instead, she motioned for Hiashi to come to her, and then finally, Neji saw tension build in the remaining occupants of the room. Save for Hanabi, who stayed remained slouching, half asleep in her chair.

He heard Kiba's rapid pacing slow down.

Looking up from where he had bent down slightly to let the small nurse murmur her news into his ear, Hiashi shot his nephew an accusing look. The long haired boy on the receiving end of it only frowned in response. After all the warnings they had heard, there was no way that Hinata was actually...

And she says it's time to go.

Whatever the nurse was telling Hiashi, Neji couldn't figure it out from where he was standing. They were speaking to one another in low voices, so that despite the smallness of the room, none of the other occupants could hear. He couldn't even see the nurse's face with his uncle's head in the way.

Hanabi rolled over onto her side, still in her chair, curling up like an old cat. She let out a small meowing sound when Kurenai put her hand on Hanabi's side and lightly scratched, as if to further the effect. The sound was what made Neji turn away from his inward conflict about his cousin's condition and his uncle. He and the woman stared at one another for a moment, and he thought that he saw the tiniest hint of a knowing smile creeping into the corner of her mouth before she pointedly turned her red eyes onto the quieter of her former students.

Not caring if his uncle spotted him, Neji spun around to look at Shino head on, while the boy in question merely stretched as if trying to work out the kinks out of his back that came from spending too much time seated in the same position.

So he didn't notice it at first. Because he was too irritated at Shino- he was emotionally indifferent to the event, alright, but how could he be so _casual?_ That was why it took him an ridiculously long amount of time to notice the tiny black bug that came scuttling toward the bug-lover and crawled up from the floor, on onto Shino's out stretched foot. As if to make up for it, his eyes followed the little creature as it climbed up the boy's pant leg and disappeared under his jacket.

Once the bug was secure, Shino stood up quietly, grabbed onto Kiba's jacket (who had started pacing again when he realized that the nurse was only going to tell Hiashi about Hinata's condition), and left the room with Akamaru fallowing them closely, without a word to excuse themselves.

Kurenai stood up with just as little care to whether the Hyuuga leader saw her movements or not, and started for the door. But on the way, Neji saw her eyes again flicker to his face the jump back toward the door way. She silently asked him, _"Are you coming?"_

In response to this, Neji stood still, thinking. Despite the obvious lack of concern that teameight was showing, Neji thought that his uncle would definitely notice if he were to bolt of the door as mindlessly as Hinata's dog-loving teammate...Yet, he still found himself walking out the door after only the brief moment of hesitation.

In the hallway, Neji had the impression that Kurenai had made the other two shinobi wait for him. They were all facing towards the door expectantly when he came out. Kurenai offered him a welcoming smile, and then nodded for Shino to report.

Doctor says, "The baby's fine,

The bug-lover's voice was quiet, as it always was from what Neji knew about him. What else could one expect from someone who so rarely spoke? Unfortunately, under the circumstances, Neji thought that the low voice was like throwing salt on a fresh wound. And if the impatient tapping that he heard from the side that the Inuzuka was standing on, he apparently wasn't the only one who thought so.

Shino raised his hand to the side of his head, letting the little spy-bug scurry onto his hand, where it's dark body stood out starkly against his pale skin. Holding the bug fondly in front of him, Shino watched it crawl over and around his fingers as he spoke. "Something happened during the delivery. I think the baby was positioned incorrectly inside the womb. The doctors wanted to do a Caesarean, but Hinata was already too far into labor for them to set up...the baby's just find though. It's getting cleaned up right now."

When Shino fell silent, the other three present waited. Kurenai prompted him with, "And Hinata?"

The bug trainer's head straightened from where it had turned to fallow the progress of his bug's journey up his arm, and though Neji couldn't see his eyes through the dark sunglasses (who wears sunglasses in a hospital, anyway?), he thought that Shino's eyes rested on him. "They can't stop the bleeding."

"Has Tsuande-sama been contacted yet?" Kurenai again, voice coming out a little faster.

Shino shook his head. "They haven't been able to locate the Hokage yet."

"Why not!" When Neji and Shino looked at her, they were both surprised to see Kurenai's teeth digging into her lower lip.

Turning to look the other way, Neji found himself staring at Hinata's other teammate. Kiba's eyes had unfocused. His attention had gone inward, possibly for the first time in his life. Neji wondered if he knew anything about pregnancies beyond what he had seen with bitches and puppies.

Down on the floor, the sound of a small dog whimpering could be heard as Akamaru apparently tried to say something to his owner. How he had gotten the little dog into the hospital in the first place was another mystery beyond him...

As for Neji himself...as Shino's voice and the Gennin instructor's went on, he was aware of the tones changing. Kurenai's was getting louder. She began to sound like a wartime prisoner-interrogator. And Shino...well, his voice was too quiet to sound different regardless of his emotions.

Eventually, Kiba sprang away from the circle the four of them had formed. He watched as the dog-boy shook his head from side to side, as if he were trying to dislodge it from his body. Then he started to say something. Loudly. But Neji wasn't listening. He just mumbled an excuse under his breath and turned to go back into the hospital waiting room.

He could still hear Kiba through the door.

Going to the line of chairs along the far wall, Neji sat down quietly and slowly began to turn the information he had gotten from Shino over in his mind. If Hiashi had been hearing the same thing from the nurse, then it certainly seemed strange that he hadn't said anything in return. Or perhaps he had, after Neji had left the room. Or maybe Hiashi just didn't care what happened to his shamed daughter anymore.

With that thought in mind, Neji blinked and brought himself back to awareness of his surroundings. The first thing that he noticed, was that he was sitting beside the magazine rack, in the exact chair that had been occupied by his uncle earlier. He frowned and looked around the room trying to find his clan head and came up with the conclusion that Hiashi was no longer. It was around this time, that Neji noticed something that he really should have noticed sooner. That there _was _someone in the room with him, and it was not his uncle Hiashi. For one thing, he was sure that his uncle's eyebrows were never that thick.

"But you'll have to leave,

"Lee..." Neji said slowly. He turned to look at the chairs on either side of him. Hanabi was gone. "Where did my family go?"

The green clad teenager addressed, standing next to the door that led into the delivery room, struck a pose as if it were completely normal for him to appear in hospital waiting rooms in the middle of the night, and said brightly, "Your younger cousin was feeling tired, so your uncle decided to take her back to the Hyuuga estate!"

Neji lifted an eyebrow at the happy tone. It sounded strangely out of place in the quiet room. But more importantly...Hiashi had left Hinata in her condition? _Alone?_

That didn't fit. For one thing, Neji had just spent the last few minutes standing directly outside the hallway door. Looking back to his teammate, Neji noted that Lee remembered enough about his think-before-speaking nature to pick up on how his eyes suspiciously shifted to the delivery room door beside him. Placing a hand on it casually, Lee said, "There's another door in the delivery room that leads out into a hallway on the other side of the building." Striking another pose, he added, "Doctor use it to get around the hospital more efficiently!"

Filing away this information, Neji stood up and started to walk towards the door. He said, "I'll wait with Hinata until Hiashi comes back."

Lee reacted almost immediately. Dropping his pose, Lee purposely side-stepped so that he was standing directly in between Neji and the door with his feet spaced far apart for extra support. Offering him another friendly smile, though less wide, he said, "I think he wanted you to stay here."

Neji's white eyes narrowed on the spandex-wearer. Inwardly, he thought that he could almost feel a vein pulsing in his head, but was equally sure that he was only imagining it. The other boy's perfectly round eyes suggested that the latter was a lie, when Neji asked, "Why are you here, Lee?"

Smile shrinking a bit more, Lee replied, "I...was just passing through, and your uncle was on his way out..." Even if Lee hadn't trailed off, they both knew that the story was a lie. One look at the clock on the wall, clearly reading two in the morning, destroyed the excuse.

Lee was a miserable liar.

Stepping away from Lee, Neji turned around and went to the other door. Just as he thought it would, the undeniable sense of another shinobi's chakra began prickling at the back of his mind as he approached it. Behind him, the sound of his old teammate tentatively saying his name and telling him that he should just sit down reached him. Neji's hand snaked out an grabbed onto the door handle and pulled the door inward.

He was careful when he was opening it, or so he thought. He had actually pulled back on the door too hard to keep it's hinges from letting out a small, but definite noise. As a result, he found himself looking into two half-lidded black eyes staring at him from the other side of the doorframe.

"Nara," Neji said flatly to the brown haired boy in front of him.

His greeting was met with Shikamaru shifting his weight so that it was baring down on the right leg rather than the left, and a bored, murmured, "Neji." Blinking his eyes once, Neji noticed that there were bags under the eyes and decided that the ponytailed boy actually was tired at the moment rather than just lazy, when he let a pause stretch between saying his greeting and, "What are you doing?"

"Where's Hinata?" Neji asked back. He guessed that his cousin's team had gone. There was no way that Kiba could have gone so long without making some kind of noise.

"You don't have to worry about that. Just sit down." He raised one hand to idly scratch at the outer shell of his ear. "You're uncle got me called on duty to keep you company until he comes back. I was sleeping too. How troublesome..."

"I want to stay with her until he gets back." Neji cut off the Nara in his mumbling, a little rudely, but manners didn't really need to be used on the lazy ninja. He fixed a stare onto the ponytailed boy that would have told anyone not-sleep deprive to get out of his way if they kept their own best interests at heart.

Shikamaru only stared back at him without raising so much as an eyebrow. "Don't be troublesome. You're to stay here until your uncle gets back."

Neji supposed that he really could have tried his luck at knocking the Nara out, but there was Lee behind him. And there were possibly other shinobi inside the hospital. Glaring, Neji had to stepped back from the door, letting the ponytail wearer close it. Turning to go back to his seat, his glare became more for frustration than anger. He had purposely been left behind, while his cousin was a short distance away, suffering from post-delivery complications. He wanted to ask if Shikamaru knew about Hinata's condition, if he understood that his cousin might be at that moment laying in a bed somewhere, alone and bleeding, and possibly...

_Dying. _The word echoed through Neji's mind as he stepped back farther into the room. He felt a little colder inwardly, walking back to his seat as if by mechanic programming when he heard Lee say his name and asking if something was wrong.

_Was _something wrong?

"Cause his mama's fading fast."

**"I-I don't want you to th-think that no one cares..."**

Neji stared directly in front of him until a warm hand fell onto his left shoulder. He blinked, and on reflex, reached out to brutally grab onto the person's wrist, pulling it away from his body. When he looked at the hand's owner, he again wasn't aware of any facial expression on his face. From Lee's slightly surprised look, Neji assumed that he was still glaring.

His former teammate was sitting beside him in one of the waiting room chairs. At his defensive move, Lee's heavy eyebrows had drawn upward; worry was still evident in the boy's voice when he asked again, "Neji, are you alright?"

Neji only stared back at Lee uncomprehendingly. He could tell that the other boy was uncomfortable. Well, so was he. Neji kept his eyes on the green-clad ninja, even when the Nice Guy looked away from him guiltily, and heard himself demanding in a monotone, "Where was Hinata moved to?"

Round eyes turned on him for a moment, then turned away again. "It doesn't really matter."

Relentlessly, Neji kept his white eyes trained on the other ninja -the same one that once claimed to be his rival back when they were on the same Gennin team, but now refused to look at him.

Slowly, Lee mumbled something that sounded close to, "She doesn't want to see you."

This time Neji was aware of the glare when it came onto his face. He let his pale eyes narrow on Lee's form, as if he could see the words floating around in the air around him. Hinata didn't want to see him? That simply didn't make sense. He didn't believe it. It had to have been Hiashi. His uncle thought that he was the father, Neji reasoned to himself. He wanted to keep Neji away.

He would just have to make Lee tell him the truth, then. That's what Hinata would do for him. He could see her steadily working Lee down in her polite but insistent way.

But Neji was better suited for brute force.

Neji's head had turned to stare at the wall across from him again while he was thinking. He started to turned it back toward Lee, only to nearly collide with the spandex-wearer's already hunched forward head, cutting the other boy off in mid sentence. "Are you..."

Apparently, Lee had started speaking again without Neji noticing. The round-eyed boy was leaning over to him, speaking quietly as if someone might have suddenly come running through the door. After pausing at the almost crash into his former teammate, Lee shrugged the surprise off and went on whispering his question determinedly.

"Is it yours?"

And Johnny hit his knees.

The room became silent as it's two occupants locked eyes. Hinata had been asked that question multiple times. By her father, her maids...perhaps even by her own teammates, Neji guessed. But he knew that she never actually answered the question.

And no one had ever asked Neji.

When his month finally moved, Neji answered with the first words that came to mind, "Don't call her an it."

It wasn't a real answer, he thought after the words left his mouth. From Hinata, it had been a light rebuke that she could fire when someone asked her about her child's heritage a bit too aggressively. But from Neji...

Lee didn't move. He knew Neji too well from their Gennin days to try interpreting the vague answer on his own. Maybe, Neji thought on a _slightly_ more amused note, it was because the boy's skills were all for poses and overly taxing body strength and speed. Whatever the reason, Lee stayed in his position, leaning into the long-haired boy's personal space, waiting for a simpler answer.

They continued to stare at one another.

Neji remembered what Hinata had said to him before, about how she wanted to keep the parentage a secret. She'd asked him to help her that night, and had said yes...which was why he mentally cursed his words, even as they left his mouth, "If I say yes..." his eyes wanted to dart away, like Hinata's would, but he forced them to remain level with the heavily eyebrowed pair across from him. "Will you let me go?"

Still not a direct answer, but a far less vague one. Whether the green-clad ninja would accept it or not was still a guess...

Neji's ghosting fear of being forced into betraying his cousin outright was put to rest when Lee suddenly sprang off of his seat, as if he had been waiting for a cue from an invisible director. Neji half wondered if the Nice Guy would have jumped up so readily if he had denied fatherhood, but he wasn't in a mood to ask. Not when Lee was motioning for him to get up and fallow him back over to the delivery room down. Once there, Lee returned to his earlier position directly between Neji and the door, looking at him uncertainly, even as his hand felt around behind him for the door handle. A soft click told Neji when his old teammate had found the door, and apparently unlocked it.

And there he prayed,

Lee turned and peeked into the room before opening the door fully, making sure that it was empty on the other side. When the green-clad boy finally stepped aside, Neji heard him softly murmur, "You know I'll have to go after you almost immediately or someone will figure out that I helped you, right?"

Neji didn't answer him with anything more than a slight nod as he stepped out into the delivery room and heard the door close behind him.

Even with that warning still fresh in his mind, Neji had to stop a minute and gap at the room in front of him. It was already so...clean. The floors looked like they had been recently mopped, the machinery was all switched off and their attachments neatly set or folded on top of them, waiting for someone to come hook them onto the next pregnant woman. Even the delivery table looked like it had been scrubbed and sterilized.

It was like Hinata was already a past issue.

Behind him, he heard Lee throwing the other door open, and yelling to Shikamaru, "He escaped!" That snapped Neji out of his shocked state. Spotting the door that Lee had told him about earlier, Neji started running, not caring if his footsteps were heard or visible on the semi-wet floor. He could have slipped and cracked his skull, like Naruto or that irritating Inuzuka.

When he got out into the hall, he turned a corner without thinking. He really didn't have any idea where Hinata was being kept. If his old teammate had known, Lee hadn't told him. He activated his Byakungon as he turned a corner, and came to a step of stairs. Behind him, he could hear the lazy Chuunin and his old teammate coming up behind him. Shikamaru taking a while wasn't surprising, but Neji could tell that Lee wasn't using his full strength. Despite what he had said, the Nice Guy wasn't trying to complete his mission full-heartedly. Neji might have smirked if he wasn't painfully aware that getting caught in Shikamaru's shadow technique would be the end of his only chance of finding Hinata.

"Take the very breath you gave me,

He went up the stairs three at a time, picking up his earlier pace when he reached the top. With his bloodline ability activated, he whipped his head from side to side rapidly as he ran, trying to spot a familiar small figure. He wasn't even sure if he was anywhere near the maternity wing anymore, but if Hinata had been in as bad a condition that Shino had made it sound, then it was unlikely that she had been moved very far from the delivery room's second door.

Neji knew that in most c-section pregnancies the civilian doctors used some kind of chemical to numb and paralyze the mother from the waist down. He wondered if they had had time to do that to Hinata before her body forced the baby out on its own. Either way, she would still be trapped here, only without the used of her legs. He wondered how the fragile white-eyed girl would react to that. He'd really never seen Hinata in real terror, even when he attack her...

Turning another corner, Neji caught sight of a green clad figure catching up to him. Lee. Slowly down just a little as he began to focus his attention on his hands rather than his feet, Neji preformed the necessary hand seals for the only jutsu he could think to use at the moment. He created a clone, a little like what Naruto might have done in his position, though Neji was sure that even the blonde would have made a more accurate copy than he did. As long as Lee was in the lead, he wouldn't have to worry about the front looking remotely like the himself. Even if Lee did see, Neji knew that the other boy would continue to chase the clone to distract Shikamaru. He just needed to make sure the clone resembled him from behind for the Nara's sake.

"Take the heart from my chest.

Ducking into the nearest room, Neji let the clone continue running in his place. He waited until he heard Lee run by, then Shikamaru. That was all he could do to distract them for the moment. Coming out of the empty hospital room, Neji continued running despite the fact that his pursuers were, for the moment, thrown off his trail.

He ran back toward the stairs, his eyes darting down to the floor and looking into the rooms below more than they watched where he was going. It was a wonder that he hadn't run into any nurses in the hallways yet.

"I'll gladly take her place if you'll let me,

He went down the steps gracelessly, and feeling his legs straining to go faster. There was a clock somewhere nearby, though where he didn't care enough to find out; its steady matter-of-fact ticking seemed to echo and stretch out in the air, the way someone's footsteps would. It seemed unusual under the circumstances.

"Make this my last request.

"Hinata!" He called out, more for the sake of drowning out the sound of his own rapid footsteps and the clock's calm ticking, than anything else. She was on this floor, he told himself. She couldn't have been moved farther...

"Take my out of this world,

"Hinata!"

He heard himself calling out again. Vaguely, a voice in the back of his head told him that running around and screaming wasn't worthy of a ninja of his level, but what was the point of being quiet now? Lee knew where he was trying to go, and even if he did pretend to lead Shikamaru on, he wouldn't be able to keep from hunting him down for long...

"HINATA!"

He heard feet again. Not close, but running. Running feet in a hospital wasn't very common. There were only so many possibilities...He told himself to calm down. People wasted energy when they became frantic.

"But, God, please,

But he couldn't let himself leave the building until he knew that she was okay...

"Don't take the girl."

kkkkkkkkkk

Lee allowed his run to slow down to a light jog as he approached the stairs. Behind him, he could hear Shikamaru huffing and muttering to himself about something being troublesome, but Lee knew better than to listen too closely to what his current partner was saying. Under normal circumstances, he would turn around and offer the ponytail wearer a bright smile, strike a pose, and come up with some WITTY remark to lift his spirit. Gai-sensei said that this method could lift anyone's spirit, and Lee, (secretly) wondered if Gai-sensei had ever been saddled with Konoha's laziest ninja for a mission.

After reaching the bottom of the stairs, he picked up his jog again, trying to move as quietly as possible through the halls. A Nice Guy does not wake up sleeping hospital guests. Especially not if they're on the same floor as cranky, exhausted, post-pregnant women.

He went down the hall, past the delivery room's second door, and turned into the hallway five doors down. Behind him, he could still heard Shikamaru. He wanted to ask the lazy ninja if he could sense chakra ahead, but decided against it. He wasn't looking forward to dragging Neji away. If nothing else, he knew that it would mean being sore, and possibly occupying a bed inside this same building by tomorrow, depending on his former teammate's emotional state.

When he came to the eighth door down, he took hold of the door knob before turning around to watch his partner catch up. He wondered if he had been too obvious about his reluctance to carry out their mission. Meeting the ponytailed boy's eyes, Lee sent him a ghost of a confident smile as he willed his hand to turn the knob.

Shikamaru stared back at him with half-lidded eyes and shrugged his shoulders in an indifferent manner. But he pushed himself flat against the wall anyway, so not to be seen right away if the white-eyed boy happened to be planning on attacking them.

Personally, Lee didn't think that was likely.

Letting the smile slip off his face, Lee opened the door.

Hiashi hadn't done much before he left the hospital. Though both Lee and Shikamaru had been informed of where Hinata was moved to, Lee (and he was sure, Shikamaru too) had expected something a little more...nice. The room was a regular multi-occupant room. The two beds closest to the door were both filled with a sleeping, formerly pregnant woman, still oddly shaped from the pregnancy weight that stayed behind after the baby's removal.

Lee went into the room first, walking slowly and carefully scanning the areas to the left and right as he made his way in. Behind him, Shikamaru did the same. Then they came to the back bed, the one farthest away from the hallway's light. It had been harder for them to see from the doorway, but Lee was sure that both of them already had a vague idea of what they were going to find.

Lee motioned for Shikamaru to stop behind him, and then after a moment of hearing nothing but their own breathing, looked back at the other ninja. He didn't see any interest or emotion on the brown-haired boy's face. But as a Nice Guy, had to believe that there was some kind of feeling in his partner. Something...

Neji was right where he thought they would find him. Laying on the bed, right beside Hinata, with his hair draped over the edge like a stray blanket that just barely missed the ground. From the angle of Neji's body, his back was toward the door and the harshly white hospital light. He might have been another clone, if it weren't for the sound of his breathing.

Shikamaru and Lee locked eyes for the umpteenth time that night. Honestly, Lee wasn't sure how many times during this mission he had reluctantly stared at someone he'd grown up with. Shikamaru's face was still untouched. If anything, Lee thought that he could have described it as annoyed. But the brunette finally let out a loud, irritated sigh and turned around to slink out of the room, muttering again about something troublesome or whatnot

Lee wanted to smile a little at the Nara heir. He was at least letting him talk to Neji alone, but for all Gai-sensei's training, he couldn't make the muscles in his mouth move. Instead, Lee turned back to the bed.

As he came closer, Lee noted worriedly, that his ex-teammate's form was just as still as the one if was curled around, except for a lone, pale hand laid over the former Hyuuga heir's stomach that was tracing tight circles with one long finger.

Lee had never seen Neji like this. It was almost enough to make him wonder about whether or not he should say something before reaching him, or maybe even call Shikamaru back in. Neji was too stoic to even be in this situation.

Still, he kept walking until he reached the side of the Hyuuga's bed. He counted to five, stalling and giving himself the excuse of needing to calm down. His hand moved slowly when he sent it to land on Neji's shoulder to bring attention to himself.

Neji didn't respond. Lee could feel the tension in the small part of the white-eyed boy's body that he was touching. It was so forcefully rigid, it was quivering from the strain. Lee, still holding on, shook the shoulder as if he were asleep, trying to bring out a reaction from his former teammate. It didn't work. Neji's head stayed firmly planted on the pillow beside his cousin's, though when Lee leaned forward a bit he saw that the other's eyes were open and blinking periodically.

Leaning down so that his head was closer to the other boy's, Lee whispered, "We have to get out of here now."

Neji blinked.

Lee tried to make his voice soothing, which for over-energetic Lee, was actually a little creepy sounding in his own opinion. Hearing it that closely, Neji should have flinched. "Someone might find you if we stay here."

_Use we, _he thought. Making Neji feel separated was not a good thing to do at the moment. And if Gai-sensei had taught his favorite pupil anything, it was that he had to be comforting and supporting in every situation! Tugging on the paler-boy's shoulder, Lee found that Neji was like a child's flexible rubber doll: he moved only if specifically prompted. Pulling on the white shirt, Lee got Neji to sort of sit up before turning him around so that they were facing each other.

The one hand stayed over Hinata's misshapen stomach. "Come on, Neji," Lee said, his hold sliding down to the other boy's hand. He tugged insistently on Neji pale hand until he got him to stand up, and rewarded him with a friendly smile as he started to lead him towards the door. Neji stopped moving only once, when his right hand was forced to abandon it's spot on his cousin's body, breaking their contact.

Lee looked back at Hinata's still form. A tiny bit squeamishly, he noted that the sheets of the girl's bed had been stained, and looking at his companion's clothing, so had Neji, along the length of his right leg. He didn't want to think about what had caused the still damp, red stain, or where the substance used in it had come from. Instead he just pointedly kept his attention focused on what was above the other boy's shoulder's. There was nothing wrong up there.

In a sense.

Eventually, Lee gave up and opted for keeping his eyes trained on where they were going. Neji's face was so...blank. Like it had been at his mother's funeral.

Slowly putting distance between themselves and the Hyuuga girl's hospital room, Lee began to wonder if he would actually be able to get Neji out of the building unseen. And if so, what he was going to put in the report for this last-minute, late-night mission? Shikamaru hadn't been waiting in the hallway when Lee got Neji outside of the room. Somehow, Lee thought that he wouldn't be working with the other Chuunin again after Tsunade received complaints that he was "too troublesome."

...If he weren't a Nice Guy, he would have smirked inwardly. But still, he was curious about how the Nara was going to record their mission...

Neji stopped them again just before they reached the elevator. Lee had just been thinking about what kind of story he could make up if he went to Kakashi-san for advice, when they passed by a long, wide window in the hallway wall. Lee thought at first that his former teammate had just dropped into a deeper trance (uncharacteristic, but mourning and shock do that to people, right?), and pulled harder on the lax hand he was still holding. When nothing happen, Lee turned around. And saw the sigh above the window.

_Nursery._

Turned toward the window, Lee couldn't tell whether his friend's colorless eyes were still glazed over or focused. He was only able to fallow the angle of the other boy's head to find a suitable guess for the reason that they had stopped. On the other side of the glass, Lee could three rows of small, squirming newborn children, only separated by the occasional switch from blue to pink blankets depending on gender.

Johnny's daddy was taking him fishing,

Lee didn't know much about children, being an only child himself. But he did remember hearing somewhere that all children were born with blue eyes, regardless of what they look like later in life. Looking at the nine infants behind the window, Lee saw that this was a true fact. Except for one. When a pale, dark haired little girl wrapped in a light pink blanket yawned, she blinked open her eyes so that for a second, their color could be seen through the window, before turning over to find a more comfortable position.

Lee couldn't help fidgeting as he watched the little girl yawn again, opening her eyes more fully than before. Neji inhaled and leaned a little closer to the window. Lee guessed that he had been forgotten. Then the child squirmed, rolling over once again to go back to sleep. Lee wanted to grab onto Neji's arm with both hands and force him to go down the hall with him before a nurse or someone came to check-up on the newborns. But he found himself reluctant to do so when his attention went back to his friend's face and saw something strange.

Neji hadn't cried when his mother died. That had been a discussion topic among Konoha's women for a brief period before Hinata's scandal started. Neji wasn't crying now either, exactly. But there was extra moisture in his eyes that came from staring at something for too long without blinking. He stood barely and inch away from the glass with his hand still hanging limply in Lee's, and his eyes trained on a small, little girl. When he finally did blink, his eyelids pushed out the extra liquid, sending two clear drops downward to fallow the lines of his jaw.

But Lee knew they weren't tears.

Neji never cried.

When he was eight years old...

A/N:

Hello. I finally finished a het story! Yay for me! I've been wrestling with this story for almost a month now, maybe longer. I started drafting it the same time as I was writing Ignorance is Bliss, but then put it on hold to work on chapter eight of Family Matters, and let myself forget my angle…I made an honest attempt at writing a het though. But, as people can see, I made a lot of changes between the story and the song. I just couldn't see Neji saying half the things in the lyrics. It just…wouldn't work. Maybe Sasuke could have said them, if he was drunk.

What was I thinking when I put this plot together? I don't know. It might have been something along the lines of, "Hey! Why don't I get EVERY character that I absolutely CANNOT write with together and put them in the same story?" I swear, if I could only have thought of a way to throw Zabuza in there, I would have gotten them all.

Dear NejiHinata readers,

PLEASE DON'T HURT ME!


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